Updated 4 p.m. ET: Allegedly “inappropriate” emails between U.S. Gen. John Allen and the woman who sparked the investigation into CIA Director David Petraeus do not signify the two had an affair, a defense official told NBC News on Tuesday.

“There was no affair,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.  The emails in question could be misconstrued, the official said, predicting that the investigation will prove Allen’s innocence.

Allen, the commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, is under investigation over allegations that he exchanged “inappropriate” emails with Jill Kelley, a senior defense official told reporters earlier Tuesday.

---

A difference of opinion appeared to be brewing at the Pentagon about how to characterize the emails, with another official calling them flirtatious.

Kelley, a Tampa, Fla., woman who has acted as a volunteer “social liaison” with military officials at MacDill Air Force Base,  inadvertently launched the investigation that led to Petraeus’ resignation by complaining to the FBI about anonymous emails she received.  FBI agents traced the allegedly threatening emails to Paula Broadwell, Petraeus' biographer. 

Emails on 'coming and goings' of Petraeus, other military officials escalated FBI concerns

During the investigation, agents discovered emails between Petraeus and Broadwell that were indicative of an extramarital affair between them, according to government and law enforcement officials.

Petraeus, who was appointed 14 months ago to head the Central Intelligence Agency, announced his resignation on Friday, citing an extramarital affair.

Word of the investigation into Gen. Allen’s involvement came early Tuesday, when U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta issued a statement during a flight to Australia for a meeting with defense officials there, saying that  the FBI had referred “a matter involving" Allen to the Department of Defense's Inspector General.

“Today, the secretary directed that the matter be referred to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense for investigation, and it is now in the hands of the Inspector General,” Panetta said.

Panetta’s statement did not include specifics, but a senior defense official traveling with him told reporters that Allen “was under investigation for “inappropriate communications” with Kelley.

The official also said the investigation involved some 20,000 to 30,000 pages of material, mostly emails, which were sent from 2010 to 2012, adding that Allen “disputes that he has engaged in any wrongdoing in this matter.”

Later in the day, however, a defense official at the Pentagon told NBC News that the number of emails between Allen and Kelley was inflated.

 

"That is a mischaracterization," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The communications with General Allen were lumped in with a lot of other email traffic."

The official said that the Allens and Kelleys were "family friends," and the emails were written in that manner. Many of the emails were not personal communications between the general and Jill Kelley, the official added, but included Allen's wife. And many were between Allen's wife and Jill Kelley, with General Allen just copied, the official said.

"What we're dealing with is the possible perception of inappropriateness," the official said, but it will become clear that there was no wrongdoing. "This is not at the level of the director of the CIA."

According to a senior U.S. military official, Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson read "a number" of the emails between Allen and Kelley before he advised Panetta to refer the matter to the Inspector General.

"Leon Panetta didn't make this decision lightly," the official said late Tuesday. The emails were more than just calling one another "sweetheart," characterizing them as flirtatious, the official said.

While the emails may not prove an affair or even be inappropriate, they were unprofessional, the official said.

Allen will meet with investigators over the next few days, but then he is expected to head back to Afghanistan to continue in his role as Commander of ISAF, according to the official.

Panetta’s statement said that Allen would remain commander of ISAF during the investigation and that he was “entitled to due process in this matter.”

But Allen’s nomination to take over as head of U.S. forces in Europe and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, was put on hold “until the relevant facts are determined,” Panetta said.

Allen was in Washington, D.C., preparing for his Senate confirmation hearings which were originally scheduled for Thursday, NBC News reported.

Allen had no advance warning about the investigation, a close aide of Allen’s told NBC News. He was alerted to the probe by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey Monday night ET. Allen had a number of meetings scheduled for Tuesday on Capitol Hill, although the aide was unsure if they would take place.

Allen’s connection to the Petraeus investigation also seems to have caught the Defense Department off guard.

“This came as very surprising news, to say the least. No one in the Pentagon is leaping to conclusions just yet,” a senior defense official traveling with Panetta told NBC News.  “It's important to review the materials to determine the facts, and it's too early speculate about where this will lead.  In the meantime, Gen. Allen needs to focus on the war effort, which he's successfully led since last year.”

The ISAF was also unaware of the investigation until late Monday or early Tuesday, and it declined to comment, in a written statement, referring all questions to the Defense Department.

Allen, a highly decorated officer, took over as ISAF commander in July 2011, and was nominated on Oct. 10 to take over as NATO commander, the same time that his successor at the ISAF was named as Gen. Joseph Dunford.

The confirmation of Dunford, currently assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, is now expected to be fast tracked.

“The secretary has respectfully requested that the Senate act promptly on that nomination," Panetta’s statement said.

NBC News' Courtney Kube, Jeff Black, Ian Johnston and Rachel Elbaum contributed to this report.

 

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LONDON -- The judge presiding over an inquiry into British press standards on Monday rebuked the head of Sky News, the influential news channel of Rupert Murdoch-controlled BSkyB, for breaking the law by hacking into emails to generate a story. 

Prime Minister David Cameron ordered judge Brian Leveson to examine standards after Murdoch's now-defunct News of the World tabloid admitted hacking thousands of phones to produce ever-more salacious stories.  

---

BSkyB, the highly profitable satellite broadcaster 39-percent owned by Murdoch, had previously avoided any fallout from the hacking scandal, but its admission this month that it accessed private emails for a story in 2008 on insurance fraud risked dragging the company into the frame. 

John Ryley, the head of Sky News, has defended the channel's actions and said it was acting in the public interest, but Leveson appeared annoyed as Ryley and a barrister in the inquiry discussed whether the action broke the U.K.'s broadcasting code, run by the Ofcom watchdog body. 

'Breaching the criminal law'
Ryley had just taken the oath at the high-profile media inquiry and had started to explain the 2008 email hacking when Leveson interjected. 

"What you were doing wasn't merely invading somebody's privacy, it was breaching the criminal law," Leveson said to Ryley. 

"It was," Ryley replied after a pause. 

"Well, where does the Ofcom broadcasting code give any authority to a breach of the criminal law?" Leveson asked. 

"It doesn't," Ryley replied. 

 

Ofcom said earlier on Monday it had launched its own investigation into Sky News over the email hacking admission. Sky said it passed information onto the police that helped to secure a criminal conviction. 

"Ofcom is investigating the fairness and privacy issues raised by Sky News' statement that it had accessed without prior authorization private email accounts during the course of its news investigations," an Ofcom spokesman said. "We will make the outcome known in due course." 

The story involved was the bizarre case of the so-called "canoe man," who faked his own death after paddling out to sea. Sky News said the information it found was given to police and helped to secure the conviction of the man's wife over an insurance fraud. 

Criminal charges considered over newspaper phone hacking in UK

Ofcom is already looking closely at parent company BSkyB as to whether its owners and directors are fit to own a broadcast license in light of the problems at the newspaper division. 

 Phone-hacking lawsuits to be filed in US courts

Ryley also apologized for an earlier statement made to the Leveson inquiry asserting that no Sky journalists had intercepted communications, but, at the end of the 80-minute hearing, he was given the chance to state that Sky News was entirely separate from the newspaper division of News Corp. 

"Our journalistic endeavors, our journalistic activities, our management structures are very separate," he said. 

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Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

LONDON -- U.K. broadcaster Sky News -- part-owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation -- admitted Thursday that it approved the hacking of emails by a journalist, but insisted it had been done in the public interest.

The news channel said that in one case it broke into the emails belonging to Anne and John Darwin, who became notorious after the latter tried to fake his own death in a canoeing accident as part of an elaborate insurance fraud.

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The news channel said in a statement Thursday that "we do not take such decisions lightly or frequently" and said the investigation had served the public interest, The Associated Press reported.

John Ryley, the head of Sky News, told The Guardian newspaper that the broadcaster had "authorized a journalist to access the emails of individuals suspected of criminal activity."

Ex-tabloid editor and friend of UK PM arrested in phone-hacking probe

James Murdoch insists he didn't mislead British lawmakers

Journalist: CNN star Piers Morgan must have known about tabloid phone hacking

The Guardian named the journalist involved as Gerard Tubb, the broadcaster's northern England correspondent.

It said he also accessed email accounts of a suspected child sex offender and his wife.

Darwin went missing in Britain in 2002 after going out to sea in a canoe and was presumed dead. However, he flew to Panama and his wife later joined him there. They were exposed after posing for a photograph with a realtor in Panama.

Sky News didn't identify which story was the result of hacking, but The Associated Press reported that in an article dated July 21, 2008, Tubb said the channel had uncovered documentary evidence showing that John Darwin had decided to come back to England because he was having trouble staying in Panama.

"We discovered an email," the article begins, without giving any explanation of how the message was obtained.

Sky News said the emails were later handed to police, according to The AP.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The wife of Syria's President Bashar Assad declared that she was the family's "real dictator," according to an email leaked to regime opponents, a British newspaper reported Monday.

British-born Asma Assad's messages imply that she occupies an important spot the dictator's inner circle, the Daily Telegraph reported.

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This and a slew of other alleged email exchanges among members of the Syrian elite have been spilling out for days, shedding light on the workings of the embattled government as it continues its violent crackdown on protesters. More than 8,000 people have been killed since the start of the Syrian uprising just over a year ago, according to U.N. figures.

 

 

Syria email hack points to new 'information war'

Late Sunday, a firefight broke out between Free Syrian Army rebels and forces loyal to Assad in Mezze, a main district of the capital Damascus, witnesses told Reuters, while a car bomb ripped through a residential area of Syria's second city Aleppo, a day after twin blasts killed 27 in the capital Damascus.

Car bomb in Syria after activists beaten

"There is fighting near Hamada supermarket and the sound of explosions there and elsewhere in the neighborhood. Security police have blocked several side streets and the street lighting has been cut off," a housewife who lives in the area told Reuters by telephone.

Extra troops have been patrolling in Mezze, located on the Damascus-Beirut road, after thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in the neighborhood last month to denounce Assad following the killing of several protesters.

Email: 'No more messing around'
Despite the violence, the emails allegedly from Asma Assad, 38, portray a wife who is very supportive of her husband's hard-line measures. She had indicated that she was interested in liberalizing Syria before the beginning of the uprising, the Telegraph reported.

She praised a speech the president gave for displaying a sense of strength and that there would be "no more messing around," in one email to a friend on Jan. 10, the newspaper reported.

Shortly before the government onslaught that would claim hundreds of lives in Homs later in January, she circulated an email making a joke at the expense of the city, the Telegraph said.

Msnbc.com, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Amid his violent crackdown on Syria's protesters, president Bashar Assad turned to country music to console his wife and bought songs by Chris Brown and Harry Potter apps on iTunes, while his first lady ordered luxury goods from stores in Paris and London, according to what appear to be several thousand leaked emails.

The Guardian newspaper reported that some 3,000 emails had been obtained from an unnamed Syrian opposition member.

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The emails were intercepted from June last year until early February as Assad cracked down on opponents in a revolt that the United Nations estimates has killed 8,000 people. The Guardian said the emails came from the private accounts of Assad and his wife and it had made extensive efforts to verify them.

One email that Asma sent to her husband in late December revealed the stress on the couple as international pressure grew on Syrian authorities to halt the violence.

Refugees flood out of Syria as Bashar Assad's military pummels rebels

"If we are strong together, we will overcome this together ... I love you...," the email read.

'I've made a mess of me'
More recently on February 5, 2012, Assad sent Asma the lyrics to a country song by singer Blake Shelton.

"I've been walking a heartache / I've made a mess of me / The person that I've been lately / Ain't who I wanna be," the first verse read.

According to the Guardian, the exchange was "laden with self-pity."

In July, when his wife emailed that she would be finished by 5 p.m., Assad replied: "This is the best reform any country can have that u told me where will you be. We are going to adopt it instead of the rubbish laws of parties, elections, media..."

Report: Leaked emails indicate Syria president got advice from Iran

Others among The Guardian’s trove of emails apparently reveal that Assad bought a wide range of music on iTunes, including songs by Chris Brown, Right Said Fred and A Tribute to Cliff Richard by 21^st Century Christmas.

Deathly Hallows
He also ordered the Harry Potter film Deathly Hallows Part 2 and other Harry Potter apps, in addition to the Walter Isaacson biography of the late Apple founder Steve Jobs.

Assad also appears to have shared a YouTube video with his media adviser that mocks Arab League monitors for being unable to find the regime's tanks, according to leaked emails obtained by a newspaper.

"Check out this video on YouTube," Assad wrote to Hadeel al-Ali, according to the Guardian newspaper. She reportedly responded, "Hahahahahahaha, OMG!!! This is amazing!"

In the spoof video, which the Guardian published, a narrator demonstrates how to disguise a tank in front of an Arab League monitor.

He uses a toy car outfitted with a straw as the tank and a plastic doll to represent the monitor. A stack of biscuits plays the role of a building in the devastated city of Homs.

When the plastic doll appears the narrator in the video removes the straw from the toy car, thus disguising the tank from the monitor.

"Now, as the Arab monitor comes to check whether the Syrian regime has complied with the Arab initiatives or not ... He does not know what is going on," the narrator says.

Syria laying mines on routes used by civilians fleeing violence, group says

Other emails showed that Asma was arranging for the purchase of an Armani lamp from London's posh Harrods store, placing orders for jewelled necklaces from Paris and chasing up on a delivery of furniture to Damascus.

She reportedly spent nearly $16,000 on candlesticks, tables and chandeliers from Paris, the Guardian said. A $4,000 vase also caught her eye, though she was looking for a bargain.

"Pls can abdulla see if this available at Harrods to order -- they have a sale at the moment," she wrote to a family contact in London.

The contact replied, "He bought it. Got 15% discount. Delivery 10 weeks."

The Guardian said it had made extensive efforts to authenticate the emails by checking their contents against established facts and contacting 10 individuals whose correspondence appears in the cache.

"These checks suggest the messages are genuine, but it has not been possible to verify every one," the Guardian said.

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Msnbc.com staff and Reuters contributed to this report.

LONDON - A British parliamentary committee on Tuesday published a sequence of emails which raised questions about the story News Corp's James Murdoch told to legislators about what he knew about phone hacking allegations involving the now-defunct News of the World and when he knew it.

In the email sequence, dated Saturday, June 7, 2008, James Murdoch was advised by Colin Myler, then News of the World editor, that the paper's legal position regarding a legal threat from professional soccer union executive Gordon Taylor was "as bad as we feared."

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Attached to this message was an email exchange between Myler and Tom Crone, the News of the World's principal in-house lawyer, in which Crone mentioned a "nightmare scenario."

The Independent newspaper on Wednesday published the email exchange between James Murdoch and Colin Myler, as well as the email exchange between Tom Crone and Colin Myler.

Crone explained that this scenario related to the fact that "several voicemails" on an email addressed to News of the World reporter Ross Hindley were "taken from" a phone used by Joanne Armstrong, a lawyer for the Professional Footballers Association union, which Taylor led.

The Guardian newspaper reported Tuesday that James Murdoch had written to British members of parliament, saying he had received the email chain over a weekend which was partly why he "did not review the full email chain at the time or afterwards."

The email sent to Hindley, which, in a reference to the News of the World's chief reporter, was headed "For Neville", is regarded by investigators and lawyers as one of the first pieces of evidence to reach the public domain demonstrating that phone hacking was a practice which extended beyond a single "rogue" journalist.

'Slipshod manager'
Executives of News International, the British newspaper publisher headed by James Murdoch at the time of the email exchange, initially claimed in public statements and testimony to parliament that phone hacking was limited to Clive Goodman, a News of the World journalist who was jailed in 2007 for hacking into the voice mails of aides to members of Britain's Royal Family.

In parliamentary testimony earlier this year, James Murdoch maintained that while he was aware of the existence of some kind of email, he was not informed in 2008 that it constituted possible evidence of widespread phone hacking by News of the World journalists other than Goodman.

• Story: James Murdoch steps down from newspaper boards

James Murdoch's handling of the phone hacking crisis has raised questions about his status as presumptive heir to his father, News Corp founder and chairman Rupert Murdoch.

Chris Bryant, a member of parliament for Britain's Labour Party who was a target of phone hacking, told Reuters on Tuesday that at a minimum, the email sequence newly published by the committee "says to me that James Murdoch is a remarkably slipshod manager .... He's been slipshod and News International have been slippery."

In a letter also made public by the parliamentary committee on Tuesday, James Murdoch told the panel "I was not aware of evidence that either pointed to widespread wrongdoing or indicated that further investigation was necessary." Nonetheless, he said he wished to "apologize" that this material had "only now come to light" in a late stage of the Parliamentary inquiry.

Tom Watson, another Labour Party member of parliament and a leading member of the Media Select Committee, was skeptical, the Independent reported, saying, "How can the company have just found this important email trail?"

• Official site of the Leveson Inquiry on media ethics

The Culture, Media and Sport committee is scheduled to publish a report on its phone hacking investigation sometime in the next few months.

A spokesperson for News International said the company had no comment beyond the statements made by James Murdoch in his latest letter to the Parliamentary committee.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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